


Always the Leaving

by Merfilly



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-29
Updated: 2009-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones hates this part of the relationships</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always the Leaving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saekhwa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saekhwa/gifts).



Leonard McCoy had never expected to make it this far. To be perfectly honest, he could name at least a double dozen times he had known he would not survive the calamity of the moment.

Rura Penthe had been the one that had convinced him he wasn't a young man any more, that he needed to stop his tomfoolery and settle down to a nice desk job.

Five minutes later, he'd snorted at himself, and opted for the cutting edge of medicine, leading the research into the genetic ailments that were a legacy of the Eugenics Wars, the legacy of every single race that had thought it could play god with the divine blueprint of life.

He got to watch the next generation, had to grieve as old friends vanished or died in the line of duty. He was too old, too married to his career to even consider taking someone else once Spock's life twisted them apart from one another. He wasn't expecting to be celibate, but wasn't looking for forever when his was so much shorter now. It was amazing, though, how much being a hero counted for with the impressionable younger crowd; they were willing to look past his wrinkles.

Then he met her, Faysha Ry'tor, or that was the best he could pronounce her given name. She was an orphan of Nimbus Three, one of the poor children born on the hostile planet that had been home to all three major races of their sector, and she showed it. Whip-thin, tall and angular with the defining points of Vulcanoid ears, but McCoy had known Vulcans too long to not note the very faint ridge at the skull that she hid under professional bangs. Never one to deny his curiosity, he snooped in her files, discovering she was the child of a Romulan woman and one of the Klingon Augments, one that had been tailored toward Romulan genetics.

She fascinated him, this outwardly Vulcan woman who lived for her work, seeking to unlock the genetics that made her as she was, trying to find a cure to the afflictions of the Augment viruses. Bones knew better than to pursue a student, and she certainly made no advances on him, but he took the time to get past the calm, aloof nature.

Lunches turned to dinners, and games of tri-chess soon followed. Like Saavik, she hid her Romulan heritage beneath the Vulcan facade, but not for fear of being feared. She hid it because she loathed that part of her heritage, and she could never pass as Klingon. She let the world at large believe the Vulcan lie, and McCoy found it to be a very great loss to the rest of their research team.

As witty and and sharp as Spock had been, his former lover could not even begin to match the wicked humor Faysha brought to the table, a pointed device that McCoy found turned against him on more than one occasion. It was too easy to fall into the old habits, arguing with logic by day, trading wit by evening, and then...

He honestly wasn't sure how it had gotten to this point, as he watched her folding her uniforms. She had moved in, some time after earning her full degree, and he'd never questioned it. He wasn't really prepared for how thick his throat got, as old as he was, to be watching yet another companion move on without him.

"You're taking the admiralty, remember?" Faysha said, after he'd realized he was staring. "We're both moving on, with you going to Starfleet Medical Academy permanently, and me to the USS Intrepid."

"Stop throwing logic at me, woman," he growled irritably.

She sighed, stopping her meticulous task, and came to him, annoying him again because he had to look up at her. She ran a hand through his whitened hair, then met his eyes fully. "How much longer, before you hated the questions of if I am your daughter? Of the looks? It's better this way, Len. You knew it with him; know it with me now."

He pushed closer, still hating the frailty growing in him, still wishing for a younger man's life again, much as he had when Spock left him. "I'd put up with all of it, Fay, and you know it." He then drew himself away, up, the proud man he'd been for so long. "But I won't do it to you."

That, just as with Spock, was the truth, and they both knew it. All that was left was the leaving, and that would be all too soon.


End file.
